3.5
Dirt Music
ByPublisher Description
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Winner of The Miles Franklin Literary Award, The Christina Stead Award, WA Premier’s Book of the Year
Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music tells the story of Luther Fox, a broken man who makes his living as an illegal fisherman—a shamateur.
Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, Fox grew melons and counted stars and loved playing his guitar. Now, his life has become a “project of forgetting.” Not until he meets Georgie Jutland, the wife of White Point’s most prosperous fisherman, does Fox begin to dream again and hear the dirt music—“anything you can play on a verandah or porch,” he tells Georgie, “without electricity.”
Like the beat of a barren heart, nature is never silent. Ambitious and perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense, emotion, and timeless truths.
Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music tells the story of Luther Fox, a broken man who makes his living as an illegal fisherman—a shamateur.
Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, Fox grew melons and counted stars and loved playing his guitar. Now, his life has become a “project of forgetting.” Not until he meets Georgie Jutland, the wife of White Point’s most prosperous fisherman, does Fox begin to dream again and hear the dirt music—“anything you can play on a verandah or porch,” he tells Georgie, “without electricity.”
Like the beat of a barren heart, nature is never silent. Ambitious and perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense, emotion, and timeless truths.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesDirt Music Reviews
3.5
“The only thing I knew about this book going into it was that my Dad enjoyed it and whatever the blurb on the back said. It’s one of the few books I’ve gone into with no idea what was going to happen. After reading it I know why.
Trying to describe the plot of this book would make it sound like some dumb romance/revenge novel destined for the discount bin, it’s really the writing style of Tim Winton that makes this book one of the most gripping and exciting books I’ve ever read.
The book goes from realistic thoughts to fever-dream in an instant and it takes a bit of getting used to but once you’re in, you can’t put it down. Everything about this book from the setting, the characters, the story and the writing style transports you into the story in a way that made it really hard to go back to real life after a reading session.”“The beginning of this book was 5 stars; the concept is fantastic, but the characters are very one dimensional and the plot becomes so unrealistic it starts to feel like a poorly written YA romance. This book had so much potential to reflect Australian culture, particularly first nations traditions and struggles.”
About Tim Winton
Tim Winton grew up and still lives in Western Australia. Considered the pre-eminent Australian author of his generation, Tim is the author of thirty books which have been widely translated and adapted for film, television, stage, opera, and radio. He has won the Miles Franklin, Australia’s most prestigious award, four times and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for The Riders and Dirt Music. Renowned for his role in the campaign to save Ningaloo Reef in 2000–2003, Tim’s most recent work in the environmental space is the award-winning series Ningaloo Nyinggulu (2023), which he wrote and narrated. Voted a National Living Treasure by the National Trust in 1997, he is also an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In recognition of his contribution to literature and the environment, in 2023 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
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